FINDING THE COURAGE TO MARKET WHAT YOU CREATE

by Bonnie Boots

In The Internet Wizards Magazine, I celebrate the fun of making stuff and marketing it on the internet.

Making stuff is great fun. It calls out our playful nature, the eternal child inside us that asks, "What if I do this with that?" ...and then does it.

What if I put this dress on that doll? What if I ride this bike down that hill? These are the questions we challenge ourselves with as children.

Then we delight ourselves with the actual experience, the "doing" part, and delight ourselves again with the knowledge we gain from doing.

These same delights are present when we create a product. Putting together a web site or blog, a book, an audio program, an illustration or any of the million and one things we can create can be just as much fun as making mud pies if we come to it in the sprit of play.

But after creating comes marketing, and all too often this is where people stall out. They stop thinking and working in the sprit of play and start thinking and working in the sprit of fear.

I understand the fear of marketing. I've been making my way as a creative professional for more than 30 years, and I still face my own fears every day.

When I began, my fears were overwhelming. Because of the way I was raised, I believed my skills were lackluster, my talents insignificant and my experiences worthless. My greatest fear was that all these shortcomings would be exposed if I offered anything for sale.

I thought editors would say, "This article is awful! You're the worst writer I've ever encountered."

I though art directors would say, "Kids in kindergarten can draw better than you!"

Thinking that and trying anyway, even in very small ways, took all the courage I could muster.

It took me years of try and try again to rise above that misguided mindset and start getting the kind of work and reward I desired.

But trying is what saved me.

Each time I put my work out into the world, I got valuable feedback. Sometimes that feedback told me my work wasn't polished enough, wasn't as professional as it needed to be. And that hurt.

But more often than not, the feedback told me I had as much talent and skill--sometimes more! --than the people already doing that work and getting paid for it.

Each small success helped me call up the courage and the confidence to try again. And in this way, step by step, I discovered both what I was capable of and how many ways there were to sell my capabilities.

Of course there were missteps and even back steps. But each time I tried, each time I worked up my courage and overcame my mistaken beliefs about myself, I made a giant leap forward.

Even now, I continue to leap. And it continues to take courage. But I learned a long time ago that when I leap into a situation that makes me feel insecure, leap with courage and the conviction that I can handle whatever comes, what inevitably comes is wider and wider realms of opportunity and adventure and even joy.

Much has been written about the courage it takes to create. But it takes even more courage to market what you create.

If you stop short of selling what you make because you think it's not good enough, or you're not good enough, you will always be unsatisfied with your life, because you're living a lie.

The lie is that everyone else is smarter, more talented, more experienced and more accomplished than you, and this will be exposed if you get out there and try to sell your skills and abilities.

The truth is that you are just as smart, talented, experienced and accomplished as most of the people already out there selling whatever it is they make. But you will only see this truth in your inner rear view mirror, AFTER you reach down deep inside, gather up your courage and try.
 

Favorite Quotes On Courage:

Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I'll try again tomorrow. ~Mary Anne Radmacher

Sometimes the biggest act of courage is a small one. ~Lauren Raffo

I'm not funny. What I am is brave. ~Lucille Ball

Courage is tiny pieces of fear all glued together. ~Irisa Hail

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear. ~Ambrose Redmoon

Courage is doing what you're afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you're scared. ~Edward Vernon Rickenbacker

Cowardice, as distinguished from panic, is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend the functioning of the imagination. ~Ernest Hemingway, Men at War, 1942

Courage is mastery of fear, not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave. ~Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar, 1894

 
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